Rev. Robert Willingale Fursdon came to Chenies in 1906 with his wife, Elizabeth Rust, and their children Ruby, 1890, Grace, 1892, Leonard, 1894, John (called Stanley), 1896, Dorothy, 1898 and Percival, 1901.
Dorothy recalls that due to the wishes of her grandfather who desired that all his five sons become businessmen, her father Robert was apprenticed to a draper in London, boarding there with his Uncle and Aunt Beardon and his cousins. He left his job there after a row with his employer however, because he refused to dress a window with two silk shawls, folded as one with attached price, making it look twice as thick.
Instead he became head of the silk department at Gorringes, where he met Elizabeth Rust who worked in the haberdashery department at the time. Both belonged to the “Business Men’s and Women’s Bible Class” and sang choral pieces in their choir in Hyde Park where they preached week by week. Left a sum of money, some £1000, from her mother, Elizabeth hoped to keep this to educate her own children in time.
Robert and Elizabeth were married in Devon in January 1980, and Robert eventually went on to have his own business in Ely, Cambridgeshire, where he and Elizabeth had five of their children. His business was doing well, until the head milliner asked for a bigger rise than could be managed, and she left him and set up on her own nearby, taking his customers away. They moved to Birmingham at the end of 1898 where they stayed for a few years. Elizabeth’s money left to her by her mother was being sucked away into the business, but she decided she would have something permanent from it and bought a piano.
Robert and Elizabeth moved to Watford where their youngest child, Percival, was born in 1901. They had a shop at No. 63, The Broadway until business moved away to another area in the High Street. They sold out and moved briefly to 36, St James Road, next to a school run by two sisters (the Misses Goss) where Percy and Dorothy went daily. Robert took tailoring orders for a London firm for some time.
All through his life as a businessman, Robert had been preaching on Sundays, and Elizabeth had a large Senior Girls’ Bible Class at Beechen Grove Baptist Chapel, Watford. Regularly asked to preach at Chenies Baptist Church, he used to bike over from Watford, and received an invitation to become Pastor there in 1906, where he started in the March and would continue in ministry for 34 years. Percy was then 5, Dorothy was 8, Stanley 10, Len 12, Daisy 14 and Ruby 16. There was a house and garden (Kingscote)– and twelve shillings (60p) a week!
Robert was able to supplement his meagre income as a minister by serving as secretary to David Baron’s organisation HCT in Chorleywood, an evangelical mission focused on converting Jewish people, where he continued to work alongside his ministry at the Baptist Chapel for 20 years.
Dorothy remembers that none of the Fursdon children liked Tommy James, the schoolmaster of Chenies School, and that ‘Leonard walked out on his 14th birthday and never went back‘, instead going to work in London until he joined the R.A.M.C. (in “Kitchener’s 1st 100,000”) in 1914. Ruby found work as a milliner, and Grace (called Daisy by her family) in London.
Stanley also joined up during World War 1, choosing the Territorials aged 17. Stanley was killed in action at Ypres on 31st July 1917, aged just 21 and was buried at Ypres (Memorial Gate) Memorial. A memorial plaque at the Baptist Church reads:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
J. STANLEY FURSDON,
1st HERTS REG
THE BELOVED SON OF
PASTOR AND MRS R W FURSDON
WHO FELL IN ACTION AT ST JULIEN
JULY 31ST 1917. AGED 21 YEARS.
“UNTIL THE DAY BREAK AND THE SHADOWS FLEE AWAY”
Dorothy planned to join the W.A.A.Fs, but Robert and Elizabeth persuaded her to apply to the Bank instead, eventually becoming a missionary in China. Leonard also followed in his fathers footsteps, and after sailing to New Zealand in 1920 he trained as a Baptist Minister.
Percival, called Percy, attended John Lyons School at Harrow, and then went to Marylebone Station as a Junior Clerk, commuting daily during the war years. He fell gravely ill, and it was later discovered that the clerk who had been teaching him had T.B., which Percy contracted. The family’s doctor, Dr Cardew, did not recognise the condition until it was too late and he died on the 19th March 1919. Dorothy relates that ‘Dr Cardew was deeply sorry, and never charged a penny for calls after that. He continually checked Daisy for any sign of T.B’.
Grace Margaret Fursdon was married at Chenies in 1924, to a Wilfrid Phillips , and both appear in the 1939 census as living with their parents at the Manse. In 1931, Dorothy was also married to a Lawrence Wood. In the same year, the village celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Fursdon’s pastorate, the longest at Chenies thus far, with a special service followed by coffee and supper. Speeches were made, and the Fursdons declared as ‘true servants‘, and the church as ‘a happy church, with increasing numbers’ as a result of it’.
During Robert’s tenure, the Baptist Church in Chenies thrived. A member of the School Board, he was regularly noted as taking an active role in village life as Pastor, collaborating with the Rev. Harold Smith at the Anglican church to celebrate events such as the Jubilee in 1935, and the Kings Coronation in 1937, after which the village celebrated with sports events and folk dancing. in 1938 he presided over a meeting at Chenies Manor discussing Air Raid Precautions for the village. Elizabeth too, played an active role in both church and village life, running Mothers Meetings among other things.
At some point between 1921 and 1939, the Fursdons moved from Kingscote into the next door cottage, Rose Cottage, when then became the official Manse for the church as it is still today.
In 1939, after 34 years of service, Robert and Elizabeth made the decision to move to New Zealand to be with their son. Sadly, due to the outbreak of war in September, and the death of Elizabeth in October, these plans had to be delayed.
A day after she had conducted the opening service of her Mothers’ Meeting. Mrs. R. W. Fursdon passed peacefully away at the Manse aged 76. Illness had caused her to curtail her activites, but Mrs Fursdon was remembered as active in many banches of Christian work, and it would have been her and Roberts golden wedding anniversary in the January. She was buried in the Baptist Church graveyard.
The following year Robert bid farewell to Chenies after 34 years of service, and went to New Zealand to his son, who by then was the President of the Baptist Union of New Zealand. On Sunday, August 4th, Mr. Fursdon announced to his congregation that the obstacles that had stood in the way had been removed, and he hoped to sail towards the end of the month, and complete his remaining days in assisting his son.
Robert died in New Zealand in 1951, but Chenies welcomed Leonard Fursdon once again in 1955 to lead the Sunday School Anniversary services in his father’s old pulpit. Visiting the UK for the first time since 1920, Leonard was attending the Baptist World Alliance Congress in London.
The graves of Elizabeth Rebecca, 1863- 1939, Ruby Willingale, 1890-1975, Grace Margaret, 1892- 1980, Dorothy, 1898-1993 and Percival James, 1901-1919 can be found at the Baptist Church.
content sources,
Memoirs of Dorothy Fursdon, owned by Fiona Ballantyne
Buckinghamshire Examiner (various)
contributor,
Rachel Bishop
date published,
19/04/26